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National Aeronautics and Space Administration Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center Houston, Texas 77058 AC 713 483-5111

Rh Brian Welch Release No. 90-030

June 1990 will mark the 25th anniversary of Gemini IV, the first manned space flight guided from what was then NASA's newest field center, and the flight which made famous the phrase, "This is Mission Control, Houston."

The year was 1965, a time of rapid expansion in the American manned space flight program as NASA sought to meet the challenge proposed for the civilian space program by President John F. Kennedy, to land men on the Moon and return them safely to the Earth before the end of the uecade. Just four months after Kennedy's May, 1961 speech proposing that bold step, NASA chose a 1,620-acre site south of Houston for construction of what was then known as the Manned Spacecraft Center.

Houston became the new home of the Space Task Group, the cadre of scientists, engineers and managers responsible for selecting and training the astronauts, designing and building the spacecraft they would fly in, and conducting flight operations for all manned missions.

The Space Task Group originally was formed in October 1958 to carry out Project Mercury, just one week after NASA itself was created by an act of Congress to function as an independent Executive Branch agency, responsible to the President for all civilian space exploration activities. The new agency was built upon the 43-year-old foundation provided by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), whose 8,000 employees, three laboratories and budget were absorbed by the new space agency.

By the end of Project Mercury, the Space Task Group's size and responsibilities had grown to the point that a new home for manned spaceflight was necessary. Construction began on the sprawling field center in Houston in 1962 and was largely complete two years later.

Since that time, the facility, renamed in honor of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1973, has operated 60 manned space flights from the Mission Control Center, including nine missions to the Moon and 36 flights of the Space Shuttle.